Google introduced their Facebook competitor this week called Google+. I was lucky enough to snag an invitation via an acquaintance on twitter. I then sent out a few invitations of my own and started playing with it. Google is going right at one of Facebook’s big weaknesses with the Circles feature that allows you manage your social graph relationships which Facebook doesn’t easily allow you to do. On Google+ you can keep your coworkers, family, and friends easily separate and not inadvertently over share information.

One the core features of Google+ that I find interesting is how they have leveraged their search technology to create a kind of dynamic saved search they call Sparks. I think Sparks is really cool. I created a Ruby on Rails spark and when I click on it I get job postings, news articles, videos, and blog posts.

I haven’t had a chance to upload photos yet to try out that feature or the Hangout video conferencing/chat feature.

Google’s implementation of notifications is very slick and I believe web and I like it a lot.

I don’t use an Android phone so I will have to wait awhile until Google releases an iOS application but I am looking forward to being able to use it on my phone.

I also took this opportunity to add google’s +1 button to my posts on this blog.